In Australia Vic Government trying to pass laws that criminalise preaching

[dms1972]

It's an interesting article, but it doesn't change anything with regard to this law. This law is being proposed to protect vulnerable people from a practice which has been demonstrated to be harmful. We should support that, not see it as a threat.

Thankyou it was nice of you to devote that full - let me was it a full five minutes? of your precious time to giving a glance at a study took a team of researchers six years of their time with hundreds of follow ups.

 

[Paidiske]

Thankyou it was nice of you to devote that full - let me was it a full five minutes? of your precious time to giving a glance at a study took a team of researchers six years of their time with hundreds of follow ups.

This is a discussion on a forum. I read the abstract, introduction and discussion, and saved it to read properly later.

But the point remains: we know conversion therapy is harmful. We know this because of the many, many experiences shared with us by traumatised and damaged people who have been through it. We dishonour and degrade them if we refuse to listen to their testimony and respond accordingly.

 

[dms1972]

It is not a "tad naive" to accept accounts of conversion therapy. They're established fact.

You didn't even bother to give the same time and consideration to the other sides of the narrative that you apparently give to unconfirmed reports of harm - why was that?

 

[Paidiske]

You didn't even bother to give the same time and consideration to the other sides of the narrative that you apparently give to unconfirmed reports of harm - why was that?

I'm not talking about unconfirmed reports. I'm talking about things like medically diagnosed PTSD.

 

[ken777]

Sorry but that is a tad naive and really your contributions here have not done a lot to persuade me you are serious in your research or open to other points of view - its not very hard to observe how insecure many LGBT activists are and how they want to tar everyone who offers this sort of therapy with same brush, rather unfair I must say for them to try and bar others from getting help because they don't want it themselves.

The LGBT ideological bias recognizes only their side as right for everyone, so feels they must denigrate & misrepresent helping from the Biblical perspective. Many commentators recognize "helps" (1 Corinthians 12:28) as a gift in the Church to help people who are distressed. Unfortunately this is interpreted by some to only mean making the person feel better, ignoring the context of Biblical teaching on morality. The gift of helping involves love, respect & wisdom, but without the context of Scriptural standards of behavior, it is not helping but harming the person. When people request help from the Church it is because they know homosexuality is sinful - it is sad that some want those who help them according to the expressed need to be put in prison. What a day we are living in!

 

[dms1972]

But the point remains: we know conversion therapy is harmful. We know this because of the many, many experiences shared with us by traumatised and damaged people who have been through it. We dishonour and degrade them if we refuse to listen to their testimony and respond accordingly.

Listen to only one side? Now that is not very fair of you now is it?

Its been said over and over again by me and others that while that may be some peoples experience that is not everyones experience of it - can you accept that? - others in this discussion have reasoned from rigorous research or spoken from personal experience and some feel somewhat invalidated because of the way you keep pressing your POV on them. Change is possible you said it yourself - God can change people and the way that sometimes happens for some people (not all) is through guided prayer or religiously mediated therapies.

 

[Paidiske]

Listen to only one side? Now that is not very fair of you now is it?

So, someone beats someone else up, and you want to listen to the "side" of the beater, accept his justifications? We wouldn't do that for physical violence, why would we do it for emotional violence? There is no justification for engaging in known harmful behaviour.

Its been said over and over again by me and others that while that may be some peoples experience that is not everyones experience of it - can you accept that?

And not everyone exposed to lead goes on to develop severe symptoms of lead poisoning; but we work to prevent exposure to lead anyway.

So, sure, not everyone is equally harmed by conversion therapy. But that many are is reason enough not to do something.

Change is possible you said it yourself - God can change people and the way that sometimes happens for people is through prayer or religiously mediated therapies.

But we should still be careful not to engage in practices which are known to be often harmful. God doesn't need us to engage in conversion therapy in order to be at work in the lives of people.

 

[ken777]

You didn't even bother to give the same time and consideration to the other sides of the narrative that you apparently give to unconfirmed reports of harm - why was that?

It seems when Judas committed suicide he should have blamed Jesus.

 

[dms1972]

The LGBT ideological bias recognizes only their side as right for everyone, so feels they must denigrate & misrepresent helping from the Biblical perspective.

There likely are some deficient psychotherapists as well as individuals who want to misrepresent and malign the therapy - I'd think any individual who had no oversight or set up on their own with no church or affliation with a counselling body - who was just claiming to be able to offer therapy in this one area - is not qualified - people need more than a bit of psychoanalysis - at the least they need a new community and new outlook on life.

I came across this quote :

"Mature mental health demands the ability to be flexible. We must be able to continually strike and restrike - a delicate balance amongst conflicting needs, goals, duties, and responsibilities. The essense of this discipline is balancing and unlearning and giving up something in ourselves in order to consider new information. While it may seem strange to choose stagnation over flexibility in order to avoid the pain of giving up parts of the self, it is understanable given the depth of emotional pain that may be involved in doing so. In its major form, giving up is the mos painful of human experiences. When giving up parts of ourselves entails giving up personality traits, well established and learned patterns of behaviour, ideologies, and even whole lifestyles, the pain can be excruciating. Yet these major forms of giving up are required if one is to travel very far on the journey of life towards ever-increasing maturity and spiritual growth. As with any giving up, the biggest fear is that one will be left totally empty. This is the existential fear of nothingness, of being nothing. But while any change from one way to another represents a death of the old way, it also makes room for the birth of a new one." M. Scott Peck
​

 

[ken777]

There likely are some deficient psychotherapists as well as individuals who want to misrepresent and malign the therapy - I'd think any individual who had no oversight or set up on their own with no church or affliation with a counselling body - who was just claiming to be able to offer therapy in this one area people - is not qualified - people need more than a bit of psychoanalysis - at the least they need a new community and new outlook on life.

I came across this quote :

"Mature mental health demands the ability to be flexible. We must be able to continually strike and restrike - a delicate balance amongst conflicting needs, goals, duties, and responsibilities. The essense of this discipline is balancing and unlearning and giving up something in ourselves in order to consider new information. While it may seem strange to choose stagnation over flexibility in order to avoid the pain of giving up parts of the self, it is understanable given the depth of emotional pain that may be involved in doing so. In its major form, giving up is the mos painful of human experiences. When giving up parts of ourselves entails giving up personality traits, well established and learned patterns of behaviour, ideologies, and even whole lifestyles, the pain can be excruciating. Yet these major forms of giving up are required if one is to travel very far on the journey of life towards ever-increasing maturity and spiritual growth. As with any giving up, the biggest fear is that one will be left totally empty. This is the existential fear of nothingness, of being nothing. But while any change from one way to another represents a death of the old way, it also makes room for the birth of a new one." M. Scott Peck
​

M. Sott Peck is someone who has walked the walk.

 

[Paidiske]

The burning irony is that here is the church being asked to give up something, for the sake of others, and it seems unwilling to even consider the merit of the request.

 

[dms1972]

So, someone beats someone else up, and you want to listen to the "side" of the beater, accept his justifications?

So everyone who practices some sort of SOCE beats people up - the elderly lady who fervently prays with troubled souls is knocking them about the vestry? - ah ok!! sorry its pointless debating with you as you are only capable as far as this topic goes of emotional arguing, a failure to understand others or consider their experiences or view point - not reasoned discussion - and a fair bit of naivety. Have a nice day

 

[Paidiske]

So everyone who practices some sort of SOCE beats people up - the elderly lady who fervently prays with troubled souls is knocking them about the vestry?

Do you not think that words can be deeply harmful? Well-meaning elderly ladies can still do immense damage in the way they speak. They might be doing so ignorantly, but that is where legislation like this is helpful; it helps our community to learn to avoid harmful behaviours.

As for failure to understand others etc... it seems to me that that criticism could fairly be levelled at people arguing for conversion therapy to be allowed to continue.

 

[dms1972]

No, I'm not really open to other points of view on this

Quite obvious.

 

[ken777]

So everyone who practices some sort of SOCE beats people up - the elderly lady who fervently prays with troubled souls is knocking them about the vestry? - ah ok!! sorry its pointless debating with you as you are only capable as far as this topic goes of emotional arguing, a failure to understand others or consider their experiences or view point - not reasoned discussion - and a fair bit of naivety. Have a nice day

It is ignorance of what actually happens in Bible based churches, which provide the support people are seeking to live according to their faith, opposed to the ideologues who want to deny that right because they know better. The arrogance is staggering!

 

[ken777]

and also quite evil

 

[Paidiske]

My position doesn't come out of ignorance. It comes out of having too much knowledge of exactly what happens in some churches.

There's nothing evil in wanting to prevent harm.

 

[SilverBear]

That is untrue - there is a body of peer reviewed evidence for its efficacy - I posted a link to a seven year long research study and you have ignored it (no one suggested it could help in every case - no psychotherapy ever does). Remain in ignorance if you want.

"First, and most basically, the Jones and Yarhouse study did not examine in any systematic way the efficacy of reparative therapy or any other kind of psychological therapy as a means of altering sexual orientation. The participants in the study were involved in religiously based support groups which primarily had as a goal to reinforce a traditional moral view of sexuality. Clearly, the participants hoped they would change and engaged in various religious interventions to assist that end. However, the study did not assess the role of professional therapy and cannot legitimately be used to say such therapies work." Warren Throckmortin



Jones and Yarhouse reported that 23% of the participants remaining in the study labeled their experience as “conversion” from a homosexual orientation to a heterosexual one. But when one looks at these few individuals you find that they weren't homosexual in the first place. Jones and Yarhouse used the seven point Kinsey scale to assess the starting and ending orientation of the subjects. on the Kinsey scale zero indicates one is totally heterosexual and seven indicates one is totally homosexual. the 23 individuals discussed all rate a 5 or lower and in fact were the individuals with the lowest scores. Those with higher Kinsey scores dropped out of the study long before it's completion. The 23 individuals showed an average movement of 1.55 points on the Kinsey scale. Meaning they started the study as bisexuals and ended the study as bisexuals

 

[SilverBear]

Thankyou it was nice of you to devote that full - let me was it a full five minutes? of your precious time to giving a glance at a study took a team of researchers six years of their time with hundreds of follow ups.

hundreds?

 

[SilverBear]

So everyone who practices some sort of SOCE beats people up - the elderly lady who fervently prays with troubled souls is knocking them about the vestry? - ah ok!! sorry its pointless debating with you as you are only capable as far as this topic goes of emotional arguing, a failure to understand others or consider their experiences or view point - not reasoned discussion - and a fair bit of naivety. Have a nice day

Leslie Pilkington, the Christian counselor you championed in post #625 certainly abused people